Major League Baseball was formed in 1903 with the merger of the National League (NL) and the American League (AL). The NL and the AL had acted as independent organizations from their founding in the 19th century. The two leagues engaged in what was known as the βbaseball warβ in the years prior to the merger, as the Midwest-based AL moved its teams into the established NL domain of the East Coast and wooed away star players from NL squads. The leagues established a truce in 1903 that resulted in the creation of the World Series, which matched the annual winners of each league to determine a national champion, as well as the National Commission, a three-man governing body that oversaw Major League Baseball but was replaced by a single commissioner of baseball in 1921.
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